1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a scheme for managing a network utilizing information outlets in a home network environment.
2. Description of the Background Art
In recent years, there is a rapid trend for digitalizing electronic devices as exemplified by advances of the multi-media technology, and this trend is already noticeable in the office environment.
In terms of hardware, this trend has been materialized in forms of introduction of PCs, digitalization of OA devices and formation of networks among them. Also, in terms of software, this trend has been expanding to cover the basic functions of hosts (which are progressively light-sized and transferred to PCs), the application software such as the word-processing software, the spreadsheet software, etc., and the Internet application such as the WWW.
The similar trend can also be seen in the home environment for home use devices and related fields. Namely, even in the home environment, this trend for digitalization has been steadily progressed in forms of digitalization of AV devices (DVD, digital VTR, digital video camera, etc.), digitalization of broadcasting, and Internet access such as OCN.
This trend of technological innovations that has started from the office environment is expected to progress toward the formation of networks in future. Namely, it is expected that the technologies of various fields such as information processing, communication and broadcasting will be unified by the digitalization, and inter-mixed with each other by the formation of networks.
There are many candidates for the network technologies that provide the bases for this trend. For example, the Ethernet has overwhelming records of the actual use in the office environment and is probably the most promising candidate even for the home PC network. Also, the ATM is another serious contender because of the general consensus among the infra-structure constructors (telephone companies, CATV companies, etc.) to keep constructing the infra-structures based on this technology in view of the advantageous characteristics of the ATM such as its fast, real-time, and wide bandwidth properties.
In addition to these candidates, the network technology (bus technology) called IEEE 1394 has been attracting much attention recently. This IEEE 1394 has several remarkable characteristics such as its fast, real-time (QOS guaranteed), and plug-and-play properties, so that there is a high expectation especially among the AV industries on the IEEE 1394 as the most promising candidate for a future scheme for inter-connecting digital AV devices. This vogue has also instigated much interest to the IEEE 1394 from the computer industries as well.
In the initial phase, it is expected that the inter-connection of the home use digital devices by these various network technologies will be realized in conjunction with the spread of the home use digital devices, depending on preferences and demands of the users, and in this way prototype digital networks will be gradually built up inside each home. When these digital networks become more widespread, it is conceivable that a home will come to be equipped with xe2x80x9cinformation outletsxe2x80x9d in the similar manner as the electric outlets commonly found in our homes today.
Namely, similarly as the currently used electric outlets, dedicated outlets for the purpose of making connections to the home network will be provided at each room or any other convenient location within a home. These information outlets are inter-connected either directly or via bridges behind the wall, for example, so as to provide an infrastructure capable of easily realizing things like xe2x80x9cAV data transfer from this room to that roomxe2x80x9d.
In the IEEE 1394 mentioned above, in order to realize such information outlets, the so called xe2x80x9clong haul 1394xe2x80x9d which is capable of ensuring a cable length of over 50 meters is currently under the discussion, and its use in realization of the domestic information outlets will be quite promising.
Now, in the current network management, the network configuration information (such as an information regarding a node that exists in the network or an information regarding a service that is provided in the network, for example) is discriminated according to MAC address, IP address, host name (domain name) or the like that is assigned to each node, and displayed on a screen of the network management terminal and the like. In general, the network manager is an expert in the network art so that he basically encounters no difficulty in a situation like that.
However, in the home network, actual nodes will be the home use devices such as TV, VTR and camera, and it is quite difficult to expect a general home use device user to be capable of handling such a node management and a network management that requires the naming of these nodes by domain names or even worse discriminating these nodes according to MAC addresses.
What seems the most simple and convenient way of doing the same in the home network is to relate locations and devices, as in xe2x80x9cthe TV on the second floorxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cthe DVD in the reception roomxe2x80x9d, and so on. This way is intuitively easy to comprehend speaking from our everyday life experiences.
However, it has been difficult to realize this because of the following problem. Namely, in the link layer network technologies most notably represented by IEEE 1394 and Ethernet, there is a concept of node xe2x80x9cconnectionxe2x80x9d but there is not a concept of node xe2x80x9clocationxe2x80x9d. Namely, it is possible to recognize things like xe2x80x9cthis node is connected to the networkxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cthe node A is connected next to the node Bxe2x80x9d, but there has been simply no way of recognizing a physical location at which the node is actually located in such a manner as xe2x80x9cthis node is located in the reception roomxe2x80x9d.
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a scheme for managing nodes connected to a home network according to their physical location.
Specifically, the present invention provides a communication device, a network information management method, and a location information notification method that can be used in realizing such a network node management scheme.
According to one aspect of the present invention there is provided a communication device, comprising: at least one communication unit for carrying out communications through a connected network, having communication ports for connecting nodes through which data are to be exchanged by the nodes; and a configuration information memory unit for storing a configuration information regarding a configuration of the communication device, having a region for dynamically describing a location information regarding a physical location of the communication device.
In this aspect of the present invention, it becomes possible to enable the other communication device to recognize a physical location (such as living room, children""s room, etc.) at which this communication device is located, through the configuration information memory unit such as a configuration memory. In particular, it is quite useful in the case of identifying a physical location of a communication device which can be regarded as not moving in general, such as an information outlet embedded in the wall.
According to another aspect of the present invention there is provided a communication device, comprising: a plurality of communication units for carrying out communications through a connected network, each communication unit having communication ports for connecting nodes through which data are to be exchanged by the nodes; and a configuration information memory unit for storing a configuration information regarding a configuration of the communication device, having a region for dynamically describing a location information regarding a physical location of each communication unit.
In this aspect of the present invention, it becomes possible to enable the other communication device to recognize a physical location at which each communication unit is located, through the configuration information memory unit such as a configuration memory.
According to another aspect of the present invention there is provided a communication device, comprising: at least one communication unit for carrying out communications through a connected network, having communication ports for connecting nodes through which data are to be exchanged by the nodes; and a configuration information memory unit for storing a configuration information regarding a configuration of the communication device, having a region for describing an information regarding whether the communication device is movable or immovable.
In this aspect of the present invention, it becomes possible to enable the other communication device to recognize whether this communication is movable or immovable, through the configuration information memory unit such as a configuration memory. In particular, in the case of identifying a physical location of a communication device which can be regarded as not moving in general, such as an information outlet embedded in the wall, a node connected to that information outlet located at the identified physical location can be regarded as being located at the same physical location (the same room, for example) as that information outlet in general. This can also be asserted from the fact that in general a length of a network cable (for example, a length of an electricity cable of the IEEE 1394) is short (4.5 m).
According to another aspect of the present invention there is provided a communication device, comprising: at least one communication unit for carrying out communications through a connected network, having communication ports for connecting nodes through which data are to be exchanged by the nodes; and a configuration information memory unit for storing a configuration information regarding a configuration of the communication device, having a region for describing an information indicating a communication port which is a leaf of a network structure among the communication ports.
In this aspect of the present invention, it becomes possible to enable the other communication device to recognize which communication port of this communication device corresponds to a leaf, through the configuration information memory unit such as a configuration memory. In particular, in the case of identifying a physical location of a communication device which can be regarded as not moving in general, such as an information outlet embedded in the wall, a node connected to a leaf of that information outlet located at the identified physical location can be regarded as being located at the same physical location (the same room, for example) as that information outlet.
According to another aspect of the present invention there is provided a communication device, comprising: a configuration information collection unit for collecting a configuration information of a connected network; a location information collection unit for collecting at least a location information regarding a physical location of a prescribed node connected to the network; and a management unit for managing physical locations of other nodes/services that are connected to the prescribed node, by regarding the other nodes/services as existing at an identical physical location as the physical location of the prescribed node as specified by the location information.
In addition, this communication device may further comprises a display unit for displaying to a user the physical locations of the other nodes/services as identical to the physical location of the prescribed node as specified by the location information.
Moreover, in this communication, the location information collection unit may also collect an information regarding a region corresponding to a leaf of the prescribed node, and the management unit may manage physical location of selected other nodes/services that are connected to the region corresponding to the leaf of the prescribed node alone, by regarding the selected other nodes/services as existing at the identical physical location as the physical location of the prescribed node as specified by the location information.
In this aspect of the present invention, it becomes possible to conjecture that the other nodes/services that are connected to the prescribed node on the network or the other nodes/services that are connected to a region corresponding to a leaf portion of the prescribed node on the network are existing in a vicinity (the same room, for example) of the identified physical location of the prescribed node, so that it becomes possible to display these other nodes/services as existing in a vicinity (the same room, for example) of the identified physical location of the prescribed node, at the display unit with respect to the user. Also, in general, the user of devices at home has a tendency for identifying a device by the correspondence between the location and the device, as in xe2x80x9cthe VTR in the reception roomxe2x80x9d or xe2x80x9cthe refrigerator in the kitchenxe2x80x9d, and according to the present invention, it becomes possible to provide a network management scheme which is in compliance with this tendency.
According to another aspect of the present invention there is provided a communication device, comprising: at least one communication unit for carrying out communications through a connected network, having communication ports for connecting nodes through which data are to be exchanged by the nodes; a memory for storing a location information regarding a physical location of the communication device; and a reply unit for returning a reply packet containing the location information as stored in the memory, to a node that is a source of a query packet through the communication unit, upon receiving the query packet for inquiring a physical location of the communication device through the communication unit.
In this aspect of the present invention, it becomes possible to reply an information on a physical location of this communication device, such as xe2x80x9creception roomxe2x80x9d, xe2x80x9cchildren""s room on the second floorxe2x80x9d, or xe2x80x9cthe third floor of the XXX department store at the Shinjuku stationxe2x80x9d, with respect to an entity (a node, for example) which has inquired such an information. Also, by implementing this procedure in a form which is unrelated to the lower layer technologies, it is also possible to realize a location query mechanism that is applicable regardless of the network type.
According to another aspect of the present invention there is provided a communication device, comprising: at least one communication unit to which a single link layer ID is given, for carrying out communications through a connected network, having a plurality of communication ports for connecting nodes through which data are to be exchanged by the nodes; and a network layer processing unit for carrying out a network layer processing related to the communications, by assigning different network layer addresses to the communication ports.
In this aspect of the present invention, even in the case where values of the link layer ID that can be given to the communication devices are to be limited, it is possible to effectively disregard such a limitation as far as network layer addresses are concerned (for example, IPv6 has an address space of 128 bits), so that it becomes possible to provide a network layer processing unit at each communication port and thereby realize an intelligent communication port having various functions such as network layer implementation of the location query protocol, implementation of power consumption query protocol, filtering of passing data, etc.
Also, in this communication device, when a packet destined to the link layer ID given to the communication unit is received from one communication port through the connected network, the network layer processing unit broadcasts at least a part of the packet with respect to other communication ports different from said one communication port if the packet is destined to a network layer address different from one network layer address assigned to said one communication port.
In this case, it becomes possible to deliver a network layer packet that is allocated to some specific communication port to a communication port which properly has that network layer address. This is because it cannot specify the destination communication port of the network layer packet according to the link layer ID alone in this case, but it becomes possible to deliver the network layer packet properly to that network layer processing unit by using the above described broadcast function. Also, by using the broadcast information, it also becomes possible to reduce works, hardware amount and memory amount that are required in preparing the routing table of network layer addresses internally and carrying out the routing.
According to another aspect of the present invention there is provided a network information management method in a communication device having at least one communication unit for carrying out communications through a connected network, the method comprising the steps of: collecting a configuration information of the connected network; collecting at least a location information regarding a physical location of a prescribed node connected to the network; and managing physical locations of other nodes/services that are connected to the prescribed node, by regarding the other nodes/services as existing at an identical physical location as the physical location of the prescribed node as specified by the location information.
According to another aspect of the present invention there is provided a location information notification method in a communication device having at least one communication unit for carrying out communications through a connected network and a memory for storing a location information regarding a physical location of the communication device, the method comprising the steps of: receiving a query packet for inquiring a physical location of the communication device through the communication unit; and returning a reply packet containing the location information as stored in the memory, to a node that is a source of the query packet through the communication unit.
Other features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.